When light seeped in to the place of confinement, he went over to the stone trough. By climbing onto it and hooking his fingers into a hollow between two stones, carved by previous prisoners, he could look out of the unglazed window. A precious breath of fresh air expired upon his cheek.
His dungeon was at the front of the palace, near to the corner by the Dom, or so he estimated. He could look across Loylbryden Square. His viewpoint was too low to see anything beyond it except the tops of trees in the park.
The square was deserted. He thought that if he waited long enough he would possibly see Milua Tal — unless she was also captive of her father.
His view was towards the west. The tiny patch of sky he could see was free of haze. Batalix cast long shadows across the cobbles. Those shadows paled and then divided into two as Freyr also rose. Then they died as the haze returned and the temperature started to mount.
Workmen came. They brought platforms and poles with them. Their manner was the resigned one of workmen everywhere: they were prepared to do the job, but not prepared to hurry over it. After a while, they set up a scaffold.
JandolAnganol went and sat down on the bench, clutching his temples between his nails.
Guards came for him. He fought them, uselessly. They put him in chains. He snarled at them. They pushed him up the stone stairs indifferently.
Everything had fallen out as King Sayren Stund might have wished it. In the incessant enantiodromia which afflicts all things, turning them into their opposites, he could now crow over the man who had so recently crowed over him. He bounded up and down with glee, he uttered cries of joy, he embraced Bathkaarnet-she, he threw merrily evil glances at his dejected daughter.
‘You see, child, this villain you threw your arms about is to be branded a murderer before everyone.’ He advanced upon her with ogreish glee. ‘We’ll give you his corpse to embrace in a day’s time. Yes, just another twenty-five hours and your virginity will be safe forever from JandolAnganol!’
‘Why not hang me too, Father, and rid yourself of all your daughters to worry about?’
A special chamber in the palace had been set aside to serve as the courtroom. The Church sanctified it for judiciary purposes. Sprigs of veronika, scantiom, and pellamountain — all regarded as cooling herbs — were hung to lower the stifling temperature and shed their balm into the room. Many luminaries of court and city were gathered to watch the proceedings, not all of them by any means as in accord with their ruler as he supposed.
The three main actors in the drama were the king, his saturnine advisor, Crispan Mornu, and a judge by name Kimon Euras, whose station in the Church was minister of the rolls.
Kimon Euras was so thin that he stooped as if the tautness of his skin had bent the backbone it contained; he was bald or, to be precise, without visible vestige of hair, and the skin of his face displayed a greyish pallor reminiscent of the vellums over which he had parsimonious custody. His spiderish air, as he ascended to his bench, clad in a black keedrant hanging to his spatulate feet, seemed to guarantee that he would handle mercy with a similar parsimony.
When these impressive dignitaries were settled in their places, a gong was struck, and two guards chosen for strength dragged King JandolAnganol into the chamber. He was made to stand in the middle of the room for all to see.
The division between prisoner and free is sharp in any court. Here it was more marked than usual. The king’s short imprisonment had been enough to make filthy his tunic and his person. Yet he stood with his head high, darting his eagle gaze about the court, more like a bird of prey hunting weaknesses than a man looking for mercy. The clarity which attended his movements and contours remained part of him.
Kimon Euras began a long address in a powdery voice. The ancient dusts from the documents in his charge had lodged in his larynx. He spoke marginally louder when he came to the words, ‘… cruel murder of our beloved Princess Simoda Tal, in this very palace, by the thrust of an ancipital horn. King JandolAnganol of Borlien, you are charged with being the instigator of this crime.’
JandolAnganol immediately shouted in defiance. A bailiff struck him from behind, saying, ‘Prisoners are not allowed to speak in this court. Any interruptions and you will be thrown back in your cell.’
Crispan Mornu had managed for the occasion to find a garment of deeper black than usual. The colour reflected up into his jowls, his cheeks, his eyes, and, when he spoke, into his throat.
‘We intend to demonstrate that the guilt of this Borlienese king is inescapable, and that he came here with no other purpose than the destruction of Princess Milua Tal, thus ending the lineage of the House of Stund. We shall produce a copy of the instrument with which Princess Simoda Tal was cruelly dispatched. We shall produce also the actual perpetrator of the deed. We shall show that all factors point inescapably to the prisoner as the originator of the cruel plot. Bring forth the dagger.’
A slave scurried forward, making a great business of his haste, and presented the article demanded.
Unable to keep out of the proceedings, Sayren Stund reached forward and grasped it before Crispan Mornu could take it.
‘This is the horn of a phagor beast. It has two sharp edges, and hence cannot be confused with the horn of any other animal. It corresponds with the configurations of the wound in the late princess’s breast. Poor dear girl.
‘We do not attempt to pretend that this is the weapon with which the murder was committed. That weapon is lost. This is merely a similar one, newly pulled from the head of a phagor.
‘I wish to remind the court, and they shall judge whether or not the fact is relevant, that the prisoner had a phagor runt for a pet. That runt the prisoner blasphemously named after the great warrior-saint of this nation, Yuli. Whether the insult was deliberate or made through ignorance, we need not inquire.’
‘Sayren Stund, your callousness will be well repaid,’ JandolAnganol said, and received a hearty blow for it.
When the horn dagger had been passed round, the curved figure of Kimon Euras uncurled enough to ask, ‘What else has the prosecution to bring against the accused by way of evidence?’
‘You have seen the weapon with which the deed was done,’ the black voice of Crispan Mornu announced. ‘Now we shall show you the person who used the weapon to kill the princess Simoda Tal.’
Into the court a struggling body was half-brought, half-carried. It had a rug tied about its head, and JandolAnganol thought immediately of the prisoner he had seen in the night, evicted from the wooden wagon.
This captive was tugged into the well of the court. At a word of command, the rug was wrenched from it.
The youth thus revealed seemed to consist of a fury of a tousled mane of hair, an empurpled visage, and a torn shift. When he was struck hard and began to whimper instead of struggle, he was recognisable as RobaydayAnganol.
‘Roba!’ cried the king, and received a chop in the kidneys which doubled him up in pain. He sank down on a bench, overwhelmed by the sight of his son in captivity — Roba, who had always feared captivity.
‘This young person was apprehended by his majesty’s agents in the seaport of Ottassol, in Borlien,’ said Crispan Mornu. ‘He proved difficult to track down, since he posed sometimes as a Madi, adopting their habits and style of dress. He is, however, human. His name is RobaydayAnganol. He is the son of the accused, and his wildness is widely talked of.’
‘Did you murder the late Princess Simoda Tal?’ demanded the judge, in a voice like tearing parchment.
Robayday burst into a fit of weeping, during which he was heard to say that he had murdered nobody, that he had never been to Oldorando before, and that he wanted only to be left in peace to lead his own miserable life.